


It's Quiet Uptown

by captandor



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, Gen, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 23:46:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7821892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captandor/pseuds/captandor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The greatest city in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Quiet Uptown

**Author's Note:**

> Written for challenge 02.03 at the "A War of Roses" landcomm @ livejournal. Prompt was "place" (New York City, to be more specific). Been a lurker in the Ham fandom for a long while now but this is my first attempt at Ham fic. Enjoy (the angst)!

New York City had really been where Alexander’s life had begun. As if he’d been reborn from his near death experiences, and become a new man in the greatest city in the world. New York had placed him in the line of sight of Mr. Aaron Burr - the other side to Alexander’s coin, his first friend and last enemy. A dingy tavern in New York had given him brothers - a family he’d never expected nor felt he deserved, the greatest friend of all in Laurens and fellow immigrants Lafayette and Hercules, making this foreign land feel more like home than the island ever had. New York had been where - at an extravagant ball, where he was completely out of place and time - he’d met the Schuyler sisters. Where Angelica Schuyler had truly changed his life, just as she’d promised. Where he had met Elizabeth Schuyler, his wife, his stability in an existence of war and budgets and politics. He’d found a demanding and brilliant mentor in George Washington himself, when he’d gone to Manhattan and seized two dozen British cannons. It was New York, hot and lonely in the summer, that had introduced him to Maria Reynolds, on a city sidewalk like any other.

And the Hamilton home in Harlem had been a place of happiness and the sound of children’s laughter. It wasn’t the sort of neighborhood Eliza had been accustomed to when they’d gotten a little house there and made the best of it, but she had slipped right into the community and made it her own. She had become the best of women, the best of wives in Harlem and in a way, Alexander would always see that place as the home of his heart.

He’d come home from the war - time spent in Pennsylvania, Queens, Virginia. He hated Virginia, but he’d made his bones there as a bold battle leader, and he came home from the war commissioned and full of fire and vinegar. Harlem was his peace, his one piece of peace in this world that they’d created.

But then tragedy had come to their happy domicile. The house that once held just hope and familiarity, had become a stranger to them. It had become the place where Maria shared their bed, where Eliza’s tears soaked their linens, where Alexander was a liar, not the center of their universe.

But it’s quiet Uptown. The house is bigger than any he’s ever lived in, though nearly silent in its stoicism. He spends time in the garden, takes the children to church down the street, and tries to see in this city the same beauty and excitement he’d seen at twenty-one. But it’s quiet now. And Eliza is quiet now. The piano is quiet now. Alexander tries to take solace in this silence as he walks the street by himself, but he never did do well with only his inner monologue to sustain him.

New York is the greatest city in the world, still, he supposes, but he struggles to agree. It’s quiet Uptown, and if that is what Eliza needs, he will live with it. But, like Angelica had always reminded them all, he will never be satisfied.


End file.
